KUALA LUMPUR: There is an urgent need for Malaysia to look at balancing the regional economic development as a potential support to its economic growth.
The World Bank country director for Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand Dr Ndiame Diop said the development of Malaysia's regional economic corridors was not aligned with its Asean counterparts.
"What the data shows, and it is quite striking, is that in fact rather than seeing a convergence of the lagging states to the richer states is a divergence," he said during the launch of the World Banks' latest Malaysia Economic Monitor report here on Thursday.
He added that with good public policies, lagging states would grow much faster than the rich states.
Diop said for example, China had been able to sustain its 10 per cent growth almost three decades by targeting coastal provinces through extending supply chain in the event of economic segregation.
"We know that this is a challenging proposition in every country because the challenge is always implementation, governance and alignment levels of governments.
"But this is probably something that can be explored.
"Malaysia in the Ninth Malaysia Plan had this sort of ideas of regional growth or corridors, perhaps going back to that to why it didn't work?
"Was it the implementation and how can it be better and leverage to those holes and turn Malaysia's economy around those holes," he said.
